Spatial compounding is a method of creating an ultrasound image by compiling multiple views or angles. Each view is obtained from multiple lines of sight at different angles. This is a departure from traditional ultrasound imaging that used a single line of sight. The views from the multiple angles are combined to create a single image, thereby reinforcing real-tissue information and suppressing random artifacts. Spatial compounding has resulted in a reduction in speckle noise artifacts; shadowing artifacts and image-degrading artifacts. In addition, such compounding, which is also known as compound imaging, results in improvements in: contrast resolution; needle visualization; tissue contrast resolution; fine-structure delineation; interface/border continuity and lateral edge detection.
The original literature called this technique Compound Imaging. Many companies are now using this technique, calling it various names including: SonoCT; CrossBeam Imaging; and Spatial Compounding.
Some systems use a method where information from both the transmit and the receive beam steering is processed to produce images from multiple view angles. The multiple images are aligned and combined to form an image. Images that are created using both transmit and receive information are typically superior to images consisting of receive information only.
One drawback of the compounding methods now employed is that they result in temporal artifacts being introduced into the final image which, in turn, causes ambiguity to the user.